Day 32 Santiago at last, and reunions

One last walk...
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It rained all Saturday night.  It was now Sunday morning, and we were snug in our beds at the Hotel O Pino.  But we had to get up sometime.  At 7:30, I voted for "later" and turned over.  Finally started moving around 9.  Finally left the hotel at 11.  20 kilometers.  Rain. Yuck. Bill Gore, I love you, God rest your soul.  (The Gore-Tex Gore.)

Megan and Diane were walking faster than I, and I "quickly" fell about 30 minutes behind.  At the 8K mark, they found a nice restaurant, and stopped.  It was so unlike the many cafe/ bars we have stopped at along the way, that we felt underdressed.  We were in hiking clothes and muddy shoes, carrying backpacks under drenched rain covers.  It was Sunday afternoon, and there were men in suits, ladies in church clothes.  Clearly, we were "not in Kansas" anymore.  Our 20K walk meant we started out only 12 miles from Santiago, so all of our journey was essentially through its "suburbs."

Reunions and Farewells

The end of the journey, at last. This is the Santiago Cathedral, where St. James lies buried, and where millions of pilgrims have walked for over a thousand years
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We walked slowly after leaving that nice dry restaurant.  Around 5, I got a phone call from our innkeeper friends from the Rectoral de Cobres, outside Vigo.  They had driven the hour or so to Santiago with our luggage, and had hoped to see me arrive.  But I was still "scaling" Mount Gozo, called "Mount Joy" by the one pilgrim in a thousand years to actually stand there in the sun and spy the spires of Santiago´s famous cathedral.  For me it was not Mount Joy, but just a mountain.  It is not a tall mountain, like, say, the Pyrenees, or Mount Irago where the Cruz de Ferro stands.  But for the final day of such a long journey, it is mountain enough!  I thought I was at the top when they phoned, but no.  Like the bear in the song, I saw another mountain, I saw another mountain.

Our late night group of pilgrims: Italian, Polish, Americans, and Dutch (?) We are within 100 meters of the cathedral, not that one would notice.
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At we approached the city limits, and especially as we crossed over the railroad tracks into the city proper, taxis whizzed by me, tempting me with their speed and convenience and their absolute dryness.  I didn´t feel like any part of me was dry, except what was under my GoreTex jacket.  My hood dripped onto the fleece I had covering my front pack.  Somewhere there´s a photo, but Megan has it...

But I had come too far to take a taxi at the end, I had to walk right up to the Santiago Cathedral.  Eventually our innkeeper friends had to leave; we missed them by about 15 minutes in the end.  (But we will be down there Tuesday the 3rd for a couple days.)

Diane and Megan at lunch in Santiago the day after arriving, glad not to be walking
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It was 7:18 pm, Sunday July 1, 2007, when we got to the Cathedral -- an eight hour day.  By my GPS, we only walked five-and-a-half of those hours, but still it was quite enough in the rain.  We were wet and we were hungry, in that order, so we all voted for showers first.  After a typically late Spanish dinner, we wandered around the old city, looking at wares in the closed gift shops along the stone paved streets.  As we turned a corner we saw a group of pilgrims standing with drinks -- among the group were the two Poles we had met the day before at the Lino Bar, and a couple of Italian girls we had seen off and on since Hospital de Cruz.  We made a group photo, and you can see we made a fine group.  A passerby was asked to snap the same photo with four different cameras.

Lunch reunion with Pierre
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Not too early Monday morning, we breakfasted and headed out to the Pilgrim Office to collect our "Compostela" certificates, the official proof of our journey.  I had my photo taken holding my certificate in front of the cathedral.  After I had it taken, another pilgrim asked me to take her picture.  I asked her if she had her certificate, and she pointed to her backpack, saying it was inside.  I could tell she didnt want to open her pack to get it out, so I gave her mine to pose with.  So, somewhere out there is a pilgrim posing with my certificate but you can´t see the name anyway.

View of the Santiago cathedral
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We had lunch with Pierre, and it was fun to catch up on the last three weeks since we had been walking together.  Pierre reached Santiago the day before I did, but he was staying put in Santiago for a couple of days before taking a "real" vacation in other parts of Spain.  Not that walking 15 or 20 miles a day wasn´t vacation enough for anyone!  We traded camino stories and mentioned the various sets of pilgrims we had both seen in different places.  Turns our we had both seen the Italian spaghetti lady (Belorado) a number of times in different cities. turns out we had once stayed in the same albergue, the same night, but it was large and our paths didn´t cross.  Whenever either of us mentioned someone, it seems the other one had seen that person too.  He had been travelling with a couple pilgrims that I had talked to once briefly in Santo Domingo - all I did was mention their socks!  But they and he figured out it had been me.

Me with my "Compostela" - the official proof that i made the journey
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This has been a truly amazing journey, and all the characters who have peopled this blog are real people, whom I deeply admire for having taken part in this amazing adventure.  My hat is off to all of you!

Next on these pages?   A quick trip to San Adrian de Cobres, near Vigo Spain, along the coast just north of Portugal; then a few days in Liverpool; a day or two in Eastleigh, Hampshire reconnecting with a former au pair; and finally a day or two in London.  Stay tuned!